Monthly Archives: February 2012

Rick Santorum won his second straight state tonight with a victory in the Minnesota GOP caucus. NBC News declared Mr. Santorum the winner in Minnesota a little over two hours after the polls closed. CNN chimed in a short while later. Unlike his earlier win in Missouri this evening, his Minnesota victory will actually earn him some delegates.

Though Mitt Romney still remains at the front of the pack, Mr. Santorum’s campaign hopes his wins this evening will help him emerge as the candidate of choice for the large numbers of conservative voters who have been reluctant to support Mr. Romney. After Newt Gingrich won in South Carolina, it seemed to be a two-way race between him and Mr. Romney, however after tonight, Mr. Santorum has thrust himself back into the conversation.

Mr. Romney’s campaign set expectations low earlier today with a memo acknowledging the possibility he might lose some of today’s three races. Minnesota, with a large contingent of conservative voters, offered favorable demographics for Mr. Santorum. Mr. Romney has focused his efforts this evening on Colorado, which will be the final state to declare a winner this evening.

Imagine you are a citizen of the City of New York, and you have, you believe, been called to a career in public service. You have begun raising money and reaching out to friends, and maybe hired a consultant or a pollster.

It is now the second week of February and due to some colossal inertia in Albany, if you were this citizen who dreamed of service in the Legislature, you would likely not know a) which district you live in b) whether or not that district has a sitting lawmaker and c) when, precisely, election day is.

In other words, New York is about to embark on an election season as chaotic and unpredictable as any in memory.

“Excuse me! It’s the twilight zone!” screamed Doug Muzzio, a professor of public policy at Baruch College, when asked to give his assessment of the state of play. “The craven self-interest and disregard for even the rough-and-tumble of democracy by these people—they don’t get it at all. They want the game fixed and they are the fixers!”

He paused for a moment to catch his breath, or to keep his aorta from exploding into the telephone.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING!”

The immediate reason for this political clusterfail is that—through a combination of sloth, happenstance and perhaps Machiavellian political calculation—two unrelated events traveling down parallel tracks went profoundly off the rails.

The first is that last year the Department of Defense denied the State of New York a waiver to hold its primaries in September. The waiver had been granted ever since Congress passed a law three years ago mandating an earlier election day to help military personnel stationed overseas with voting.

The Department of Justice sued to force the state to move up the September primary, and after several months of delays, a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the primary for congressional seats was to be held June 26.

As soon as that news broke, those considering a run for Congress—and those consultants and staffers helping them—broke into a sprint, as election day went from a comparatively leisurely eight and a half months away to now only five months off. (Privately, some politicos still doubt that this will really be the election day, perhaps expecting the power brokers in Albany to somehow defy a federal order or being so inured to chaos that they refuse to believe the state could actually have settled on a date when the elections are supposed to be held.)

But even if candidates for Congress at least know that they will face voters on June 26, this news does nothing for those in the State Assembly or State Senate and those who hope to join that club. The judge’s order applies only to federal races, so the state primary date remains unsettled. Republicans in the State Senate have argued that the June primary is too close to the end of the legislation session (which is slated to be completed the week before) and could thus lead to unnecessary politicking (ahem) during what are supposed to be business hours. They have pushed for having state races decided on the old election day in September, or, possibly, pushing the primary to August—when, Democrats point out, most New Yorkers are away, or at least tuning out politics.

If the Republicans prevail, or if they are unable to come to an agreement with the Democrats (which will, in essence, mean Republicans prevail), then New Yorkers will be asked to go to the polls four times in the course of eight months: once for the presidential primary in April, again for the congressional primaries in August or June, a third time for state legislative primaries in August or September, and then a fourth time for the general election in November.

Presumably by then ballots will have been printed with actual candidate names on them. Currently, voters around the state don’t have any idea who is vying to be their representative. For months, lawmakers in Albany have been holding hearings as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process to redraw legislative and congressional maps. Drafts of those maps were expected by last October, with final versions in hand by the first of the year at the latest. Instead, winter is turning into spring, and no candidate knows precisely which neighborhoods to go door-knocking in. A draft of the new maps for the State Senate created three districts out of whole cloth and pushed seven Democratic incumbents into four districts.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has threatened to veto it, sending the matter to the courts and creating more uncertainty and delay.

And if you are that citizen called to a career in public service, what does your pitch to voters sound like?

“Hi, I’m John Q. Public. Please come out and vote for me in June. Or in September. Unless you are drawn out of the district. The incumbent has been failing our community. Unless he is drawn out of the district. In which case, never mind.”

“The redistricting process has been shockingly late—I say shockingly late,” said Vince Morgan, a community banker who has been laying the ground work for a run against Charlie Rangel—in a Harlem district that could move up to the Bronx and Westchester, or could stay where it is and gobble up Hispanic voting blocs in Manhattan. As a hedge, he said he has begun making his case to voters in areas far removed from his home in the central part of the old district. “It’s not frustration—it’s anxiety. We are all very anxious waiting for the lines to come out. I have a better chance of telling you what the winning Pick Four numbers are than giving you a date when this will all be settled” (though, Mr. Morgan points out, any confusion would effect his bid minimally, since “God blessed me with charisma”).

If Mr. Morgan and the residents of Harlem are confused, consider for a moment their neighbors to the north in the Hudson Valley region. The congressional district there has been one of the quintessential swing districts in the county, voting Democrat during Democratic waves (as in 2006) and Republican during Republican ones. The seat is currently held by Republican Nan Hayworth. If the towns of Poughkeepsie and Newburg are drawn into the district—they are now represented by Maurice Hinchey, who lives in Ithaca and who is retiring before the end of the year—it will become what is known as a “Plus Five” Democratic district—one sure to elect a Dem. If those two towns are grabbed by another district, then it becomes a “Plus Five” Republican district, making the incumbent, Ms. Hayworth, surely safe.

Rather than wait for the dust to settle, no fewer than five Democrats have thrown their hats into the ring, even though any of them could get drawn out of the district in the end.

“It certainly knocks the heck out of your fund-raising operation. There is a lot of hesitancy about getting involved,” said Joe Mercurio, an adviser to Matt Alexander, the mayor of Wappingers Falls, who is running for the seat. Mr. Mercurio described the awkwardness of asking potential voters for money for a candidate who may or may not be vying to represent them.

“Shit happens. This is a living-off-the-land kind of campaign.”

Or consider the case of Mark Levine, a political activist in Washington Heights. He had been planning to run for the City Council in 2013, until rumors started flying that Albany map makers may draw a Dominican-majority congressional district. If that were to happen, the incumbent state senator, Adriano Espailliat, would run for it, creating a vacancy in the State Senate that M. Levine would have only a few weeks to prepare a run for—or, depending on Albany, a few months. Or, he too could wake and find himself drawn out of the district entirely.

“It’s just crazy. I’ve got little kids, and I don’t know if I can take them on a summer vacation, or a spring vacation for that matter,” he said. “I’ve become so frustrated with the process that I have to stop reading the blogs, trying to ignore every tiny rumor and ignore what is beyond my control. It was becoming extremely unproductive.”

But as tempting as it is to presume that it is simply the forces of nature that have conspired to create disarray, a confluence of unfortunate events, recall that the chaos favors the status quo. As long as would-be challengers don’t know which district they are running in, they can’t campaign. Until election day is finalized, they can’t start gathering signatures. They can fund-raise a bit, but for a fight against whom, exactly?

And so if you happen to notice a certain hair-pulling anxiety among would-be politicos who aren’t sure what the next few weeks will bring, those who have been ensconced in office for a while sound quite willing to let the process play out for as loooonggg aaassss iiiittt ttttaakkkess.

To wit, earlier this week, The Observer caught up with 40-year incumbent Charlie Rangel. He insisted he was running again, even if he couldn’t be sure where exactly—a piece of missing intelligence he sounded like he was taking in stride.

“This will be hard for a young fellow like yourself to understand,” he said. “But after 81 years, this should be the worst of my problems.”

Rick Santorum could have a big night tonight
Rick Santorum won the Missouri primary this evening in an upset victory made possible by Newt Gingrich’s failure to get himself on the ballot in the Show Me State. NBC News declared Mr. Santorum the winner j… More »

Good evening… Manhattan prosecutors have decided not to charge TV newsman Greg Kelly with rape, the Daily News has learned. “The Good Day New York” anchor and son of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had been accused of raping a 28-year-old paralegal… More »

The New York Daily News is reporting that Greg Kelly—son of police commissioner Ray Kelly and the host of Good Day NY—will not be charged by the Manhattan D.A. with any criminal complaint following an accusation that he sexually assaulted a woman. … More »

Happy hour had just ended at the Stonewall Inn on Monday night (2-for-1 well, beer and wine). Rob (dirty martini) and Steve (Budweiser) were sitting at a table discussing the merits of Tom Brady and Eli Manning.
“Brady is better in the pocket, he’s… More »

Rick Santorum could have a big night tonight
Marty Golden keeps up the public school church fight.
Mike Gianaris keeps up the redistricting fight.
The Asian-majority State Senate district is shaped weird given the area’s Asian population.
Rory Lancman … More »

The Port Authority of NY/NJ quietly released today phase 1 of an audit into the their expenses that was prompted by the increase in tolls and fares back in August of 2011. According to the report, Governor’s Cuomo and Christie charged the board of Commissioners at the PA to audit the whole agency including the More »

Tompkins County Legislator Nathan Shinagawa said he’s interested in a potential run for Congress, depending on how Ithaca and Tompkins County fit into new congressional lines. Shinagawa, a Democrat, told Gannett’s Albany Bureau that he’s been talking with local leaders about a run to succeed retiring Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, Ulster County. “The Ithaca and […] More »

New York may be losing two Congressional districts this year, but Assemblyman Rory Lancman, who announced his intentions to run for recently-elected Congressman Bob Turner’s district today, told The Politicker he’s confident Mr. Turner’s seat won’t be among them. His sentiments are echoed by Shelly Silver, who said he’d like the district to be kept around, and who, as Assembly Speaker, has as much say on what the final map will look like as anyone.

The conventional wisdom has long been that Mr. Turner’s Queens-based district would be chopped up and handed to the surrounding Representatives. However, if the district is kept largely intact, some of those surrounding seats could easily be significantly impacted.

With relatively anemic growth in Queens and Nassau counties compared to the rest of the state, it could be very difficult to avoid eliminating at least one district in the region. Although there are nine Congressional districts touching either of those two counties, some of them are particularly challenging or impossible to erase.

The two minority-majority districts, belonging to Representatives Nydia Velázquez and Gregory Meeks, are likely protected by federal law (and wouldn’t really be possible to eliminate anyway).

Three Representatives are likely too influential to see their districts eliminated and are not thought to be anywhere near the chopping block: Joe Crowley, who leads the Queens County Democratic Party; Peter King, who’s the most senior Republican in the New York delegation; and Steve Israel, who heads the electoral arm of the House Democrats. Eliminating any of these Congressmen’s districts could technically be done, but it would likely be de facto eliminating someone else’s district by placing a powerful incumbent’s electoral base in their seat.

With these five officials probably safe, only four Congressional Members remain: Bob Turner, Carolyn McCarthy, Gary Ackerman, and Carolyn Maloney.

Ms. Maloney, who’s a senior member of the House’s Financial Services Committee and whose district is overwhelmingly based in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, would probably be hardest of the four candidates to eliminate. In addition to the difficulties of carving up a district containing only a small piece of Queens, Manhattan’s many important political leaders would likely strongly object to the chaos the move would cause in their borough.

And if Congressman Turner’s district is indeed kept mostly intact, the most obvious remaining option would be to combine the Nassau portions of Ms. McCarthy’s and Mr. Ackerman’s districts into a single seat.

This would mathematically work out very well as it leaves four Congressional Members entirely in Suffolk and Nassau counties, which can house exactly 4.05 districts under the new maps. Right now, five Representatives call those two counties home, with Mr. Ackerman’s district also containing a slice of Queens.

This, again, very hypothetical Latino district, could then come at the indirect expense of Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s district. Mr. Hinchey, who represents the upper reaches of the Hudson Valley, is not running for reelection. Congressman Eliot Engel, who currently represents northern parts of the Bronx, might see his district, in addition to those belonging to his Hudson Valley colleagues, travel North towards Hinchey’s territory as a result.

(Another district would still need to be eliminated in Western New York, the area of the state that showed the most population loss, under this scenario.)

Alternatively, one could scrap the Latino district proposal and give Mr. Engel more of the Bronx instead, possibly leaving Mr. Rangel in Manhattan as he allegedly wants. The Buffalo area, whose districts need to grow more than anywhere else in the state, might be able to push other districts far enough East as to absorb Mr. Hinchey’s territory, but it could be difficult.

Or, maybe all of the talk about keeping Mr. Turner’s district is a smokescreen or a negotiating tactic, and his district is eliminated anyway.

Update: Another thought is that perhaps Mr. Turner’s district could absorb Mr. Nadler’s Brooklyn territory, and Mr. Ackerman could see his district pull almost entirely into Queens as a result, allowing all of the Queens and Nassau incumbents to have districts to run in. Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney could then see their districts push into Northern Manhattan while Mr. Rangel’s district pushes into Westchester.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo will be in Syracuse tomorrow. Reshma Saujani will host what she’s calling “one of the last intimate (fundraising) events” with President Obama in NYC before the election. Jared Kushner has emerged as a candidate in the bidding for the LA Dodgers. It’s “conceivable” that an extremely limited number of hydrofracking permits could More »

Congressman Turner (Photo: Facebook)
Congressman Bob Turner got up on the House floor today to congratulate the Giants and tell his fellow representatives they could learn a thing or two about bipartisanship from Big Blue. Mr. Turner began by saying th… More »

A reader forwarded along the below fiscal note, submitted by the Teachers Retirement System in response to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal for a new pension tier. On page three, the trustees of the plan — which include some representatives of NYSUT, the teachers union — write that the risk-reward portion of it, where employees pay […] More »

Former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, Westchester County, cautioned today against letting public authorities transfer funds among them, saying it “essentially creates chaos.” Brodsky is the long-time critic of the state’s scandal-scarred public authorities and authored the law in 2009 that reformed them and put them under the Public Authorities Budget Office. His favorite line is […] More »

PEF Rep - 30 yr member: The three years of work done and paid for by the members Shredded. Is this rhe heart of a...

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